Carl Sagan poses with a model of the Viking lander in Death Valley, California. In the Viking missions, for example – two probes sent to explore Mars in the 1970s – he collaborated on choosing ideal landing sites. Among other things, he briefed astronauts before their trip to the moon, and he was part of the Mariner, Viking, Galileo, and Voyager space missions. He went on to become a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he spent the rest of his professional career.Īlso, Sagan contributed to the U.S. In 1971, Harvard University denied Sagan tenure some speculated it was due to his controversial opinions on extraterrestrial intelligence. Shklovskii, a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist, revise and expand his classic book on extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Life in the Universe. He proved that the building blocks of life could be easily created by exposing simple chemicals to UV light. Makes a great gift! Carl Sagan and the search for extraterrestrial intelligenceĪround this same time, Sagan became interested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence ( SETI) and contributed to those programs. A unique and beautiful poster-sized calendar showing phases of the moon every night of the year. Sagan successfully confirmed that Venus could be a greenhouse furnace by using data from tables for steam boiler engineering.Īvailable now! 2023 EarthSky lunar calendar. Because in Sagan’s day, scientists were still trying to understand how Mars could be so cold while Venus is so hot. For example, the atmospheres of Mars and Venus. In the 1960s, one of Sagan’s earliest works in professional astronomical research shed light on the atmospheres of our solar system’s planets. He studied physics at the University of Chicago and earned his doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960. Sagan also contributed to the field of planetary science and monumentally – perhaps immortally – to the American space program.Ĭarl Edward Sagan was born on November 9, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. Many know him through his books and his 1980 television series Cosmos. Today is the anniversary of the birth of the late astronomer – and astronomy popularizer extraordinaire – Carl Sagan. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” Image via Wikimedia Commons. It was Carl Sagan who said, “We’re made of starstuff.
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